TY - JOUR
T1 - RELICS
T2 - Strong-lensing Analysis of the Massive Clusters MACS J0308.9+2645 and PLCK G171.9-40.7
AU - Acebron, Ana
AU - Cibirka, Nathália
AU - Zitrin, Adi
AU - Coe, Dan
AU - Agulli, Irene
AU - Sharon, Keren
AU - Bradač, Maruša
AU - Frye, Brenda
AU - Livermore, Rachael C.
AU - Mahler, Guillaume
AU - Salmon, Brett
AU - Umetsu, Keiichi
AU - Bradley, Larry
AU - Andrade-Santos, Felipe
AU - Avila, Roberto
AU - Carrasco, Daniela
AU - Cerny, Catherine
AU - Czakon, Nicole G.
AU - Dawson, William A.
AU - Hoag, Austin T.
AU - Huang, Kuang Han
AU - Johnson, Traci L.
AU - Jones, Christine
AU - Kikuchihara, Shotaro
AU - Lam, Daniel
AU - Lovisari, Lorenzo
AU - Mainali, Ramesh
AU - Oesch, Pascal A.
AU - Ogaz, Sara
AU - Ouchi, Masami
AU - Past, Matthew
AU - Paterno-Mahler, Rachel
AU - Peterson, Avery
AU - Ryan, Russell E.
AU - Sendra-Server, Irene
AU - Stark, Daniel P.
AU - Strait, Victoria
AU - Toft, Sune
AU - Trenti, Michele
AU - Vulcani, Benedetta
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank the anonymous referee for useful comments that helped to improve this work. This work is based on observations taken by the RELICS Treasury Program (GO-14096) with the NASA/ESA HST. Program GO-14096 is supported by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS5-26555. This work was performed in part under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract DE-AC52-07NA27344. R.C.L. acknowledges support from an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DE180101240).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved..
PY - 2018/5/1
Y1 - 2018/5/1
N2 - Strong gravitational lensing by galaxy clusters has become a powerful tool for probing the high-redshift universe, magnifying distant and faint background galaxies. Reliable strong-lensing (SL) models are crucial for determining the intrinsic properties of distant, magnified sources and for constructing their luminosity function. We present here the first SL analysis of MACS J0308.9+2645 and PLCK G171.9-40.7, two massive galaxy clusters imaged with the Hubble Space Telescope, in the framework of the Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey (RELICS). We use the light-traces-mass modeling technique to uncover sets of multiply imaged galaxies and constrain the mass distribution of the clusters. Our SL analysis reveals that both clusters have particularly large Einstein radii (θ E > 30″ for a source redshift of z s = 2), providing fairly large areas with high magnifications, useful for high-redshift galaxy searches (∼2 arcmin2 with μ > 5 to ∼1 arcmin2 with μ > 10, similar to a typical Hubble Frontier Fields cluster). We also find that MACS J0308.9+2645 hosts a promising, apparently bright (J ∼ 23.2-24.6 AB), multiply imaged high-redshift candidate at z ∼ 6.4. These images are among the brightest high-redshift candidates found in RELICS. Our mass models, including magnification maps, are made publicly available for the community through the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes.
AB - Strong gravitational lensing by galaxy clusters has become a powerful tool for probing the high-redshift universe, magnifying distant and faint background galaxies. Reliable strong-lensing (SL) models are crucial for determining the intrinsic properties of distant, magnified sources and for constructing their luminosity function. We present here the first SL analysis of MACS J0308.9+2645 and PLCK G171.9-40.7, two massive galaxy clusters imaged with the Hubble Space Telescope, in the framework of the Reionization Lensing Cluster Survey (RELICS). We use the light-traces-mass modeling technique to uncover sets of multiply imaged galaxies and constrain the mass distribution of the clusters. Our SL analysis reveals that both clusters have particularly large Einstein radii (θ E > 30″ for a source redshift of z s = 2), providing fairly large areas with high magnifications, useful for high-redshift galaxy searches (∼2 arcmin2 with μ > 5 to ∼1 arcmin2 with μ > 10, similar to a typical Hubble Frontier Fields cluster). We also find that MACS J0308.9+2645 hosts a promising, apparently bright (J ∼ 23.2-24.6 AB), multiply imaged high-redshift candidate at z ∼ 6.4. These images are among the brightest high-redshift candidates found in RELICS. Our mass models, including magnification maps, are made publicly available for the community through the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes.
KW - galaxies: clusters: individual (MACS J0308.9+2645, PLCK G171.9-40.7)
KW - gravitational lensing: strong
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U2 - 10.3847/1538-4357/aabe29
DO - 10.3847/1538-4357/aabe29
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85047433309
VL - 858
JO - Astrophysical Journal
JF - Astrophysical Journal
SN - 0004-637X
IS - 1
M1 - 42
ER -